1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular, a method and apparatus for processing changes in a network. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and computer instructions for reconfiguring routing devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Routing devices, such as switches and routers are used to facilitate the transfer of data between different computers in the network. Routing of data occurs seamlessly to the computers, except for in a few situations. The addition of new hardware, or the failure of existing hardware for routing traffic may disrupt or cause the delivery of data to fail.
When new hardware, such as a new router is added, routing problems occur unless the other routing devices are stopped and reconfigured to take into account or include the new router. If an existing router fails or is taken out of service, the entire network may shut down because of errors occurring with the absence of the existing router. Alternatively, other routing devices may not know that the existing router has failed and may continue to send data packets to that router. In this situation, those packets are lost and never reach their destination. Currently, this situation requires an administrator or other personnel to replace or fix the failed router or reconfigure the other routing devices to stop routing traffic through the existing router that has failed.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer instructions for taking into account routing hardware changes in a network.